Devoted to terrorism research, the political fringe, sports, parapolitics, and a little bit of griping.

December 31, 2015

How terrified some have become of causing offence. So terrified that it even precludes the development of a rational argument.

I have been reading the book "Double Jeopardy: Police Abuse of Women in Pakistan" by Dorothy Q Thomas. This was jointly published in 1992 by Women's Rights Project and Asia Watch, divisions of Human Rights Watch. I apologise for using a somewhat obscure title to make a broader political point, but even if the book itself is hard to pick-up now, the text is available online here.

Following the introduction of Islamic law in 1979 by General Zia, the number of women in prison in Pakistan increased from a mere 70 (!) to over 2000. HRW wants to address this, but its own fear and equivocation of articulating what it ostensibly advocates - universal human rights - prevents it from doing so:

"The Hudood Ordinances criminalize, among other things, adultery, fornication and rape, and prescribe punishments for these offenses that include stoning to death, public flogging and amputation. Human Rights Watch has no opposition to Islamic law per se and does not object to laws founded on religion, provided that human rights are respected and the principle of equality before the law is upheld. However, the Hudood laws, as written and applied, clearly conflict with these rights and principles. Not only do they prescribe punishments that are cruel and inhuman under international law, but they clearly discriminate on the basis of gender."

It is worth noting, this is a 'human rights' organisation writing 23 years ago. After an additional two decades of agitation from religious organisations and apologists, and migration from Muslim majority countries to the west, the fence sitting and obsessive desire to avoid causing offence is considerably worse.

Looking at the Human Rights Watch website today, the main article on its home page is a call to illicit financial donations before 2015 closes. Its financial appeal is accompanied by this mission statement:

"Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice."

If so, HRW needs to grow a pair and develop some critique of religiously based legal systems. Sharia seems as good a place as any to start. Until it does, why should anyone donate money to those practising such determined obfuscation?

December 21, 2015

Following their role in the 1984-5 miners strike, demonstrators took to mocking police officers with the sarcastic song "We're not political, we're only doing our jobs" whenever a group of uniformed police officers appeared anywhere in significant numbers.

In 2015, it seems little has changed. Flicking through the current issue of the Docklands and East London Advertiser, there is a small report on a demonstration held outside East London Mosque on 11 December, following Friday prayers. Its purpose was to condemn US Presidential challenger Donald Trump, who responded to the San Bernadino terrorist attack by calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration to the United States.

December 19, 2015

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the withdrawal of Australian and New Zealand troops from the coast of Ottoman Turkey on 19-20 December 1915. British troops were to follow suit on 8-9 January 1916.

As a resource on WW1, and certainly in terms of suggestions for further reading, I have found the Independent/the i's "A History of the Great War in 100 Moments" - easily the best series I have seen in a British newspaper in years. I have the book version, and the small section on Gallipoli - number 27, pp.80-83, is evocatively written by Kathy Marks. The sheer numbers killed still shakes you - 80,000 defending Turks, 44,000 Allied forces, including 9000 Australians. All in a little over six months. The debacle perhaps feels less distant in terms of time than other WW1 battles when you read that the last veteran died in 2002 (when I was 33) or that the failings of the Allied military were exposed by journalist Keith Murdoch, father of Rupert.

Gallipoli became central to concepts of identity for an Australia emerging from being a British colony, and Marks explains how Australian war correspondent Charles Bean situated Gallipoli in terms of its demonstration of key aspects of Australian character - courage, sacrifice, irreverence and 'mateship'. In the modern era however, such concepts could not be allowed to pass without criticism. Marks observes:

"In a 2010 book, What’s Wrong with Anzac?, the historian Marilyn Lake called it “white Australia’s creation myth”, while another academic, Martin Ball, has written that the myth “suppresses parts of Australian history that are difficult to deal with. Anzac is a means of forgetting the origins of Australia. The Aboriginal population is conveniently absent. The convict stain is wiped clean. Post-war immigration is yet to broaden the cultural identity of the population."

I wonder if those quotes tell us more about the approach and world view of the academics concerned, than they illustrate about contemporary, or past Australia. How strange it would have seemed to the men who fought at Gallipoli, and their families, that they were part of a 'white creation myth' or that they would have to wait for post war immigration before their cultural identity would be 'broadened'.

December 08, 2015

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary has today issued a report on the importance of knowledge in tackling honour crimes, female genital mutilation and forced marriage.

What is significant in the report is that it indicates some thirty years worth of policies and approaches towards minority communities in Britain may be flawed. Top-down multi-culturalism rather depends on the big white chief speaking to a big brown (or black) chief. Yet this is precisely what may need to be avoided in combating the types of crimes listed above.

"Overall, we found that the need to speak with the right people to build intelligence, and the risk to victims of speaking with the wrong people, was not always well understood by police officers and staff. The right people are not necessarily faith and community leaders, who may sometimes be the very
people promoting or supporting harmful practices in the name of honour."

The full pdf of the report is here. This is the HMIC press release on the report itself. Finally there is a broader University of Bristol report on these issues, by Marianne Hester et al, here.

"The terms include privatising 50bn Euros of Greek assets to help repay its debts, slashing pensions, and the handing over of a veto power on domestic laws to Brussels. The 2016 budget, the first by the Tsipras-led government, includes 5.7bn Euros of public spending cuts, with 1.8bn Euros coming from pensions, and 500m Euros from defence. It also includes tax increases of just over 2bn Euros".

It is hard to see how Greece can ever recover financially to that backdrop, although in a way writing of 'Greece' is a misnomer. If Brussels has the power of veto on all domestic laws, what is the point of Greece, the Greek parliament or for that matter Syrizia and Mr Tsipras?